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-X- 



WAS SHAKESPEARE 
SHAPLEIGH? 



CORRESPONDENCE IN TWO 
ENTANGLEMENTS 



The whole edited by 
Mr. yujtin Winfor 

Librarian of Harvard College 




BOSTON 

Printed and Publiflied by Houghton, Mifflin &• 
Company, and fold by all Bookfellers 

MDCCCLXXXVII 



WAS SHAKESPEARE 
SHAPLEIGH? 



A CORRESPONDENCE IN TWO 
ENTANGLEMENTS 



EDITED BY 

JUSTIN 'WINSOR 




f O^ CO/' 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 







Copyright, 1887, 
By JUSTIN WINSOR. 

Al/ rights reserved. 



) -X . 4-0 ^f-^-G 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



SDetiication 

Unto Katharine Coman 
Truer knight is no man, 

Than he of daring act, 
Who thus upon her table 
IVouId laj^ this thing of Fable 

Or, may he, thing of Fact I 



WAS SHAKESPEARE SHAPLEIGH ? 



The First Entanglement. 



I. w- 



TO HIS WIFE IN BOSTON. 




London, October 15, 1877. 
Y DEAR KATE, ~ I must tell you 
what a week of delights the last 
has been to me. A fortnight ago 
yesterday I was at Sotheran's, in Picca- 
dilly, talking with E about Shake- 
speare matters, and he told me of an old 
Elizabethan library in Northamptonshire 
which I ought to see. Presently he said, 
"And here comes the owner of it.'* Turn- 
ing to the door, I saw a gentleman of 

about sixty entering, and E introduced 

me to Sir George Beecham. I was soon 
engaged to visit Beecham Hall, to see the 
library, which I was glad to do, and to ride 
after the hounds, which I was not anxious 



2 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

to do. So down I went ten days ago, by 
rail, and was most royally treated. I saw 
Sir George and his son-in-law. Captain 
Roberts, of the Guards, start off with the 
hounds one morning, but the finest hunter 
in the stable could not tempt me ; beside. 
Lady Beecham and I had, the night be- 
fore, made what I thought was a discovery, 
and I was anxious to follow it up. 

You must know that the hall dates back 
to James the First's days. It has been 
added to somewhat since ; but the origi- 
nal builder was made a baronet by that 
monarch, and to him, Sir Gregory Bee- 
cham, the chief glory, in my eyes, of the 
estate is due, and that is its grand old 
library. I never saw a finer collection of 
Elizabethan literature in its original edi- 
tions. The good old baronet seems to 
have been a devotee of the drama, and 
from his yearly visit to London and its 
theatres he appears to have brought away 
a stock of plays for his nine months of 
country life. Here are shelf after shelf of 



The First Entanglement ) 

those small quartos of plays and poems 
which are the delight of the collectors of 
our days, — all fresh in their pristine glory, 
uncut and unrumpled. It would make an 
epoch in Sotheby's history if he could 
have the selHng of them. There is much 
about the house to interest anybody : a 
chessboard, for instance, which belonged 
to Queen Elizabeth, with her monogram ; 
a buff jerkin, whose leather is as stiff as 
vulcanized rubber, and stained deep brown 
with blood of Naseby Field, — for the Bee- 
chams were stanch royalists ; and in the 
large hall a replica of Vandyke's Charles 
on the horse. But what Lady Beecham 
and I found last night is quite another 
thing. Malone puts down an edition of 
Shakespeare's Lucrece for 1596; but no 
one else ever saw one, and the bibliogra- 
phers are all at a loss. Well, Malone was 
right, — here it was. But what is singu- 
lar about Malone's notice, he makes no 
mention of what this copy yields, — which 
leads me to think, after all, that he never 



4 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

saw it ; that is, a dedication by Shake- 
speare himself to William Heminge, speak- 
ing in it of his brother John Heminge, the 
player, you know, who was one of those 
engaged in editing the first folio of Shake- 
speare's plays after his death. Here is 
the mysterious initialed *' W. H." of the 
dedication of that volume, which has puz- 
zled everybody so long. Lady Beecham 
and I are going to make a proclamation on 
this discovery by and by. 

But I must not forget to tell you some- 
thing that will interest the Shapleys, when 
you write to them. There was a dinner- 
party here the evening of my arrival, and 
I found myself at table beside a certain 
Lady Shapley. Sir William Shapley, her 
husband, is now in America, with the 
English rifle-team, and the wife — who, by 
the way, is a sister of Lady Beecham — 
had just received a letter from him, in 
which he spoke of meeting in New York 
with our friend of the Massachusetts 
Berkshire, and how they had succeeded in 



The First Entanglement 5 

tracing kinship. This led her to speak of 
a portrait of an ancient Sir William Shap- 
leigh, their ancestor, which Lady Beecham 
had, and I promised to ask to see it, and 
let her know if I discovered in it any looks 
of our American Shapleys ; for the lines 
of the two families were united, it seems, 
in this old worthy of the Tudor times. 

That night, when Sir George conducted 
me up to my chamber, the one candle 
which he carried strangely lighted up a 
small portrait that hung, with many oth- 
ers, on one side of the long corridor we 
were traversing. After he left me, that 
painted face haunted me. I had only a 
momentary glimpse of it, but I knew I had 
seen it before. I never once thought of 
the Shapleigh portrait. I found that I could 
not sleep for thinking of it, and so got out 
of bed and stealthily went out into the cor- 
ridor, and took another look at it. I was 
not satisfied. 

The next morning, when I passed along, 
the sun shone brightly through an oppo- 



6 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

site window, and brought the painting out 
in strong drawing. It dawned upon me 
then. The resemblance was to what is 
known as the death-mask of Shakespeare, 
whose story, as we have had it of late 
years, does not encourage a belief in it, 
but whose lineaments do, so satisfying are 
they. I scrutinized the picture closely, — 
the like nobleness, the same fine-cut fea- 
tures, aristocratic and powerful. Looking 
more closely, I was quite sure that there 
was an inscription in the upper right-hand 
corner. I thought I made out W. Sh. and 
a date, of which I could see nothing but 
a 6. 

At breakfast I told my story. *'But 
that 's our old Sir William Shapleigh ! " 
cried Lady Beecham. 

I looked puzzled, and she glanced in- 
quiringly. ''If it is so, then that Shake- 
speare death-mask is Shapleigh, too,'* I 
answered. 

Sir George, who has not much enthu- 
siasm to spare in such directions, turned 



The First Entanglement. y 

the talk upon something else ; and I never 
saw the moment, while I was there, again 
to refer to the picture. . . . 



II. LADY BEECHAM TO W- 



Beecham Hall, October 17, 1880. 

My dear Mr. W : What do you 

suppose has happened since I last wrote to 
you.^ You recollect the little old portrait 
in the corridor. Sir George has had a no- 
tion lately that the old hall needs rejuvena- 
ting, and one apartment after another has 
been turned upside down to bring it about, 
— this corridor among the rest. So all the 
pictures were taken into some adjacent 
rooms ; and when I went into one of them 
yesterday to get something, this little por- 
trait lay across two chairs in such a way 
that a side-light from the window revealed 
to me the inscription in the upper cor- 
ner, which I remember you spoke of, but 
which I had failed to see, after you had 
gone, when I looked for it. I now made 
out very clearly what you said you saw, 



8 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

W. Sh., and a little warm water took off 
enough of the obscurity of over two cen- 
turies and a half to make me read plainly, 
Obiit Ap. 23, 16 16. Now this, you know, 
is just the date of Shakespeare's death, 
and what if our old Sir William Shapleigh 
is the great William Shakespeare, after all ? 
Your associating it with the German death- 
mask makes me half believe it is so. 

I have not said a word of it to any one, 
nor of our Lucrece either ; but I have 
got Sir George's permission to send you 
the Lucrece, and the picture being mine, I 
shall send that, and let you investigate 
both. I have had Flotsam make a case 
for the painting, and pack it securely, and 
to-morrow morning it is off for Liverpool 
to your address in Boston. Let me know 
of its safe arrival. Don't deprive me of an 
ancestor unless you can make Shakespeare 
a friend of our house. . . • 



The First Entanglement, g 

III. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, November 3, 1880. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — The box 
and its contents have reached me safely. 
It was very kind of you to trust so much 
to my judgment and custody. The inscrip- 
tion as you gave it to me has not faded 
during the voyage. It is unmistakable. 
But what else 1 I did not know that there 
was a board protecting the back of the can- 
vas. I soon had it out, and what did it re- 
veal .? On the concealed side of the panel 
was a painting of the lower portion of a 
man, standing apparently erect, in a pair 
of large wrinkled boots. The figure was 
cut off just above the waist. Attached to 
the back of the canvas was a paper with 
this inscription : — 

This effigies of Sir William Shapleigh 
was depicted with the holp of a masque, 
took after his dying, the twentie third 
Aprill, MDCXVL 

It is curious — is n't it ? — how this 



10 ]Vas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

date of death corresponds so exactly with 
Shakespeare's. Shall we wholly disentan- 
gle the fates of the two ? All sorts of com- 
plexities trouble me. Perhaps the ques- 
tion will come, Did Shapleigh write Shake- 
speare .'* as it has come, Did Bacon write 
Shakespeare ? Is this head Shapleigh- 
Shakespeare or Shakespeare - Shapleigh } 
Is the death-mask now called Shakespeare's 
other than the one mentioned in this in- 
scription ? 

By the way, how about the Shapleighs 
of that day ? Is there no other likeness of 
them for comparison ? Is there no monu- 
mental bust anywhere, — say at Brington 
Church, near Althorpe ? Let me know 
touching this. I have just written the 
whole story to my friend Shapley in our 
Berkshire, of whom Lady Shapley spoke 
to me as a new-found relative of her hus- 
band. 

Believe me, my dear Lady Beecham, I 
was never more eager in any quest than 
I am in this. . . . 



The First Entanglement. ii 



IV. GEOFFREY SHAPLEY TO W- 



, Berkshire, November lo, 1880. 

My dear Friend, — Your letter, and 
what you say of the Shapleys of Northamp- 
tonshire, and particularly your account of 
the canvas you have received from Lady 
Beecham, interests me deeply. I am con- 
fident enough to hope for some revelations 
yet more surprising, when what you know 
and what I know are put together. 

I will not say more now, but leave to 
your unraveling skill the enigma which I 
have sent to you by express to-day. You 
will find a paper with it, some of it old 
and some very new, the latter my own 
script, which will help you all it is entitled 
to in coming to a conclusion. 

V. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, November 25, 1880. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — I told you 
in my last that I had written to my friend 
Shapley. It drew from him an enigmati- 



12 JVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

cal letter by post and a box by express. 
The latter contained a small picture on a 
panel, somewhat roughly done, but unmis- 
takably of the same person as your canvas, 
and, as I think no one can doubt, the same 
head with the Shakespeare death-mask. 
There is a similar well-balanced brow, the 
same craniological development, the same 
firm yet delicate nose. To make the case 
sure, this new panel-picture is, as clear as 
can be, the upper half of the figure, the 
lower half of which the protecting board 
of your picture has on its inner surface. 
The two pieces of wood fit together ; the 
grain matches ; the lines of the figure 
coincide ; the sheath of the sword is in the 
one, of which the hilt is in the other. And 
so, after at leAst two hundred and forty 
years of separation in the Shapley lines, 
these two pieces of the same panel have 
come together, confirming all the facts we 
have so far got. With it my friend has 
sent me a yellow parchment, which he 
has marked as being the blazon of the 



The First Entanglement. ij 

family arms with the family pedigree, as 
made out at the Heralds' Office. The tradi- 
tion is that this paper was brought out to 
this country in 1635, by an old Geoffrey 
Shapleigh who was a younger son of your 
Sir William, and on this parchment the 
baronet is put down as dying April 23, 
161 6, — another confirmation. 

I am now anxiously waiting your reply 
to my inquiry about monumental effigies 
of the Shapleighs. I fancy there must 
be some. I don't think that death-mask, 
which I now feel certain is not Shake- 
speare's, was made for nothing, or for this 
portrait merely. The mask is so striking 
that Gerard Johnson must have been a 
feeble lout indeed if he cou]d not make 
anything more nearly resembling it than 
the bust in the Stratford Church. Wil- 
liam Page, the artist, you remember, pub- 
lished a few years ago his faith in the 
mask as that of Shakespeare, and gave cor- 
responding measurements between it and 
the Stratford bust to show how the one 



14 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

was moulded from the other. I hope you 
will find a Shapleigh monument at Bring- 
ton, or somewhere, and see if correspond- 
ences which Page fancied in the Shake- 
speare bust don't come out patent in the 
Shapleigh. Fearing you can't readily find 
photographs of the death-mask, to make 
the comparison, I send you two views of it. 
I shall wait anxiously your report. . . . 



VI. LADY BEECHAM TO W- 



Beecham Hall, December^ 1880. 

My DEAR Mr. W : You have hit it. 

There is a monumental bust of the old Sir 
William in the Brington Church, in the op- 
posite corner from the Washington mon- 
uments which you told me Earl Spencer 
took you to see. You had not had your 
curiosity excited then, and naturally did 
not notice it. I knew there were Shap- 
leigh monuments there ; but never gave 
them much thought. Sir William's is 
there now, I know ; for Sir George and I 
drove over yesterday and saw it, and had 



- The First Entanglement. 75 

your photographs with us for comparison. 
The inscription gives the same date of 
death as your friend's parchment, and the 
Hkeness to the photographs and to the por- 
trait as I remember it is perfect. I don't 
want you to take my word for it. Sir 
George has this moment gone to town to 
send a photographer to Brington to take 
pictures of the monument, and I shall keep 
back this letter for a day or two, so as to 
inclose them. . . . 

P. S. Here they are. See for yourself. 

VII. W TO GEOFFREY SHAPLEY. 

Boston, January y 1881. 

My dear Friend, — We are on the 
high road to a definite solution of this mat- 
ter. Lady Beecham writes to me that 
there is a monumental bust to Sir William 
Shapleigh at Brington, as I hoped there 
might be, and, on comparing it with pho- 
tographs of the Shakespeare mask, she 
thinks it certain one was made from the 
other. 



t*' 

\ 



1 6 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

You ask where you can find the best ac- 
count of this death-mask. I have already 
referred you to Page's paper on it, com- 
paring it with the Chandos picture, the 
Stratford bust, and the Droeshout print of 
the first foho, in which he comes to the 
conclusion that they all represent the same 
person. He says: ''The more I studied 
and restored and modeled the mask, the 
more I saw the concurring testimony that 
this is Shakespeare, if the Droeshout print 
is Shakespeare. If the Chandos portrait 
is Shakespeare, this is more so. If the 
Stratford bust is Shakespeare, this is 
most Shakespeare.'* Page, of course, cares 
nothing for the pedigree of the mask 
with its disconnected links. His argu- 
ments are based on the agreement of 
measurements by calipers of the mask 
and the Stratford bust, of which he says 
that ten or twelve fit exactly just so many 
out of twenty-six, which he took of the 
mask. He clinches his statement thus : 
" Few persons need be told that this planet 



The First Entanglement. ly 

never did at any one moment contain two 
adult heads whose faces agreed in any 
dozen like measures, and the law of prob- 
abilities makes it remote when such an 
epoch will arrive/' That is all very good, 
of course, even in its lordly extravagance ; 
but you and I care to know just what is 
known, or even presumed, about the de- 
scent of this mask. Page's paper was 
printed in a New York magazine in 1875, 
and in the previous year there was in the 
same periodical the best account I can re- 
fer you to of just this circumstantial his- 
tory. Let me give you the main points 
of it. 

In 1843 2. German gentleman, Franz von 
Kesselstadt, died at Mayence ; and when 
his effects were sold, among them was a 
small miniature, which represented a man 
crowned with laurel, and lying asleep or 
dead on a bed or bier ; this picture showed 
the body upwards from a point a few 
inches below the chin. A burning candle 
was represented by his side. The picture 



k 



75 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

had on the face '' Ab 1637," and on 
the back ''Den Traditionen nach Shake- 
speare." This picture was said to have 
been long in the Kesselstadt family, and if 
it represented a dead man it might natu- 
rally be supposed to be painted after a 
cast ; but no such cast was found among 
the effects, though there was a report that 
such a cast had existed. A dealer bought 
the picture, and four years later (1847) sold 
it to Ludwig Becker, a portrait-painter in 
Mayence, who set about inquiries for the 
cast, and is said to have found in a junk 
shop, in 1849, ^ mask which bore a strik- 
ing resemblance to the picture. It had 
on the back of it, impressed in the plaster, 
and, as experts said, before the plaster 
was hardened, this inscription : " f Ac Dm 
16 16." This was the year, you know, of 
Shakespeare's death, and a few hairs 
which adhered to the cast were auburn, 
which we are told was the color of Shake- 
speare's hair. This is the whole story, 
and it constitutes all the evidence there 



The First Entanglement. ig 

is, except that kind of evidence which 
Page finds in correspondences with the 
well - known likenesses of Shakespeare. 
Of course you can imagine all sorts of 
ways in which the mask may have reached 
Germany ; but not a bit of testimony is 
produced to show any way to have been 
the true one. Becker, the next year (1850), 
having worked himself into the belief that 
he had the death-mask of Shakespeare, 
took it to England and, being a natu- 
ralist, made the acquaintance of Professor 
Owen, of the British Museum, with whom 
he left the mask, while he went to Aus- 
tralia. Owen and others were struck with 
its appearance, but the missing link in its 
descent prevented any one seriously giv- 
ing in his adherence to the view of it 
held by Becker, or at least the authori- 
ties of the British Museum did not. They 
are said to have tried hard to establish the 
fact that some member of the Kesselstadt 
family had been in England in King James's 
day. Owen had the mask for ten years, 



20 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

and on the death of Becker, in 1861, it was 
sent to Becker's brother in Darmstadt, 
where it now is, or was recently. 

You are aware that the Stratford bust 
is known to have been made before 1623, 
and that sculptors, or some at least, have 
agreed to its bearing evidences of having 
been made from a death-mask. The im- 
portant point to be ^established is, of 
course, Did Gerard Johnson, the tomb- 
maker, have this mask } He did not, cer- 
tainly, if our proofs pass for anything. 



VIII. LADY BEECHAM TO W- 



Beecham Hall, January, 1881. 

My dear Mr. W : You can't imag- 
ine what an ardent disciple you have got 
in Captain Roberts. He came down from 
London to pass the holidays with us, and 
I told him about our quest, and how it was 
going on, and showed him the photograph 
of the Kesselstadt mask. You know how 
warm Roberts is, when he gets excited, 
and nothing could prevent his starting off 



p 



The First Entanglement 21 

one day to Brington in a drag, though it 
was threatening a furious storm at the 
time. Khnch, the rector there, is an old 
college mate of his, and Roberts would 
have him light up the sexton^s torches and 
take him into the church, and made poor 
Klinch hold the torch while he clambered 
upon the sexton's shoulders to get a nearer 
view of the bust. He saw enough to make 
him feel sure that the maker's name was 
cut at the back of the marble ; so he 
stayed all night with Klinch, and sent word 
to us to keep his wife from worrying, for it 
was now pelting furiously. The next morn- 
ing, Klinch, he, and the sexton managed 
to move the bust, so they got at the in- 
scription, and found it to read, Kennelton 

SCULPSIT. 

Roberts came home, full of exultation. 
'^ We '11 have it now. When I get back to 
London, Rowe will tell me all about Ken- 
nelton, — whom he married, what he ate 
for breakfast ; there is not anything Rowe 
don't know." You can well picture Rob- 



22 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

erts saying this in his enthusiastic way ; 
but perhaps you don't know that Rowe is 
one of the people at the British Museum, 
who, as Roberts says, '* knows every- 
thing." 

But Rowe did not give us the first light. 
Emily said, in that quiet way which you 
remember, '^ KeitneltoUy — KesselstadtJ' I 
don't know whether to put a question-mark 
or not after this little speech, she uttered 
it so half inquiringly and half exultantly. 
But we did not any of us see the point, 
and poor Emily had to explain. 

You remember that day when I took 
you to Naseby Field, how we passed a 
pretty sequestered lodge, to which, I told 
you, an Austrian gentleman came every 
autumn to try our shooting. Some of his 
people are often over to our kennels, and 
Emily had picked up the word Kessel, 
which they used sometimes instead of Hun- 
destalL 

'^Now," cries Roberts, *Svas it a Kes- 
selstadt who came from Germany to be a 



The First Entanglement. 23 

statuary here, and Englished his name, 
or was it a Kennelton, going to Germany, 
Germanized his ? I '11 ask Rowe/' 

So there, dear Mr. W , the matter 

stands at present. I hope you are mak- 
ing as good progress on your side of the 
ocean. 

XI. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, February, 1881. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — You are 
toppling Page's Shakespeare over splen- 
didly. I never did like it. I saw it at 
Ben Stevens's, in Trafalgar Square. Page 
had managed to give a very supercilious 
look to so noble a model as the Kennelton 
mask, let us call it. 

I have written to a friend of mine in 
Heidelberg, giving him some hints sug- 
gested by your letter, and perhaps some- 
thing will come of it. 



24 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 



X. FRIEDRICH VON GAGERN TO W . 

[Translation.] 

Heidelberg, Marchy 1881. 
My old Friend, — An inquiry such as 
yours, coming to an old pupil of Gervinus, 
must have a prompt and careful response. 
I have been at Darmstadt, and have seen 
the mask, and compared it with the photo- 
graphs which you sent. What you suppose 
to be a depression on the brow is nothing 
but a discoloration of the plaster, which is 
perfect except for the unfortunate snip of 
the nose, which the photograph shows. I 
could not find that the present owners 
could give me the slightest addition to 
what you already know. You know Dr. 
Becker, who owned the mask, has been 
dead twenty years, and I don't think any- 
body has since tried to follow up the Kes- 
selstadt history. So I determined to go to 
Mayence. Here I chanced to stumble upon 
Hans Biichner in the street. You remem- 
ber Hans ; he was the biggest swaggerer 



The First Entanglement. 25 

of the Swabians, and left not a little of his 
blood on the Hirschgasse floor. You and 
I went with the white-capped Prussians, 
you recollect. Those were days we have 

got over bravely, my dear , and Hans 

has, too. He is now quite the man of 
Mainz, and edits the Zeitung. Most singu- 
larly he has in his office a grandson of the 
old Graf von Kesselstadt, and I had a talk 
with the young man. His father, the son 
of the Graf, had been long absent at the 
time of the old gentleman's death, and was 
supposed to be dead. In fact, he never re- 
turned, but died at Cape Town, in Africa, 
where our young friend was born. While 
there the family were much with English 
people, and indeed our friend's mother was 
an English woman, or, rather, of English 
origin, and born at the Cape. So Shake- 
speare was familiar reading to her son. 
He was still young when his father died, 
but he was old enough to take an interest 
in his stories about his grandfather, and 
remembers his father's speaking to him of 



26 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

the portrait of Shakespeare ; but he says, 
as he looks back upon it and recalls how 
he spoke of the inscription which the pic- 
ture had on the back, that he half sus- 
pected, even then, the inscription might 
have been the work of his father's boyish 
mischief. The father, by all accounts, 
must have had a wild youth. 

This gave me a good opportunity to turn 
the light of your discoveries upon the 
usual story of the picture and the mask ; 
and I found he had no particular pride in 
the story, and was quite willing to accept 
any interpretation. The name Kennelton 
did not seem to suggest anything to him. 
He said he had a few old papers, that 
were found in his father's cabinet after 
his death ; but he did not seem to know 
anything of them. I tried to get him to let 
me see them, but he made excuses. . . . 

I am quite delighted at this renewal of 
our correspondence ; and in memory of old 
days I am as ever, etc. 



The First Entanglement. 27 

XI. FRIEDRICH VON GAGERN TO W . 

[Translation.] 

Heidelberg, March, i88r. 
My dear : I had but just dis- 
patched my letter yesterday when I got 
one from my new friend at Mainz. It 
seems to settle the question. I had barely 
mentioned to him the name Kennelton, 
so he had no data to concoct a story 
upon, and what he writes complements 
what you have written me too exactly to 
leave room for any further question. He 
says that among the papers which he has 
he found a letter dated London, June, 
161 7, in which the writer speaks of his 
success in London, and of his being em- 
ployed by notable people in the making of 
monuments, and mentions the bust of a 
Lord '' Shepleg,^' which he was then at 
work upon, as offering the noblest head 
imaginable for his art. He tells his corre- 
spondent, whoever he was, to direct his 
letters to ^* Kennelton, tomb-maker, with 



28 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

Maximilian Powtran." The letter is with- 
out address and signature ; indeed, is but 
half a sheet. . . . 

XII. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, April, 1881. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — We don't 
need Rowe. It is all fixed now. Just read 
the two inclosed letters from my friend 
Von Gagern. 

Powtran, you know, was the statuary 
whom James the First employed to build 
that magnificent monument to Elizabeth in 
Henry the Seventh's chapel in the Abbey. 
Can't you find, my dear Lady Beecham, a 
place somewhere at Beecham Hall to set 
up the bust by Page, which used to be 
called Shakespeare's .? It is a capital like- 
ness of doughty old Sir William Shapleigh, 
despite its superciliousness. Perhaps Lady 
Shapley will buy it. If either of you don't, 
my friend and your kinsman, Geoffrey 
Shapley, will. Adieu. 




The Second Entanglement 

I. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, October, 1885. 
Y DEAR LADY BEECHAM, — It is noW 

ten o'clock in the evening, and I 
have been sitting with Kate, talk- 
ing over a recent visit to your kinsman, 
Geoffrey Shapley, in Oakside, while we 
gazed into the fire blazing upon a pair of 
old Shapley andirons. Does not that ex- 
cite your curiosity ? Kate has gone to bed, 
leaving me a parting injunction to write to 
you, and tell you all that will, we are sure, 
interest you very much. The truth is we 
have got to undertake another quest, as 
you shall see presently, and we shall need 
you, Roberts, Emily, Rowe, and all those 
who acquired glory in the last one, to help 
in the matter. 

I don*t know whether in my letters I 



jjo IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

ever told you about the old house in our 
Massachusetts Berkshire, which Geoffrey is 
teaching us to call Oakside, now that its 
trees, whose setting-out by his father is 
one of the earliest things which he remem- 
bers, are beginning to assume something of 
dignity in their proportions. Your neigh- 
bor, Sir William Shapley, took a run, if I 
remember rightly, through New England 
when he was here in 'yy, and perhaps he 
will recall for you the type of these old 
New England mansions of the early years 
of this century or of the close of the last, 
if my description fails to be graphic. Oak- 
side has two houses on it ; the older is 
a low, one-story, gambrel-roof building, — 
think of the hind leg of a horse, with its 
gambrel joint if you don't understand the 
term, and you will picture the broken slope 
of the roof each way from the ridge-pole. 
Perhaps you have the roof in England, but 
I don't think you use the name. This old 
house was the earliest built in this part of 
the State, and I do not know that it has 



The Second Entanglement. ^r 

anything in its history to distinguish it ex- 
cept that General Jeffrey Amherst lodged 
in it one night in October, 1758. It was 
that season, you may remember, when Ab- 
ercrombie made his miserable failure at 
Ticonderoga, and Amherst, having cap- 
tured Louisbourg, had brought his victori- 
ous army to Boston by water, whence he 
marched them across the country to Al- 
bany, to reenforce the dispirited forces of 
Abercrombie. It was on this march that 
his army encamped one night near this old 
house, and the General found it a conven- 
ient place for a night's quarters. That 
very night, and in this old house, Geoffrey's 
great-grandfather was born, and was named 
Jeffrey Amherst Shapley. Our friend, since 
he discovered in the old pedigree, which 
was so important a link in our other quest, 
that the original American Shapleigh, the 
brother of your Sir William, was named 
Geoffrey, has always given the older spell- 
ing to his name. This Jeffrey Amherst 
Shapley, or Squire Shapley, as he was al- 



^2 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

ways called in later life, was the builder of 
the other house at Oakside, and which our 
friend now occupies. Geoffrey says that he 
distinctly remembers the old gentleman, 
who died at ninety-six, I think it was, 
when he himself was a mere lad. Geoffrey 
recalled for me, the other day, the anti- 
quated figure of the old squire, with his 
low -crowned, broad-brim black hat, his 
queue down his back, his knee-breeches 
and silver buckles, — for he was one of the 
last to wear these old-fashioned habili- 
ments in that part of the State. 

The house which he built is a square 
two-story structure, with a roof sloping to- 
ward each side ; with four tall chimneys, 
two porches on contiguous sides, making 
two front doors, one on the street and the 
other on the avenue which leads along 
one side of the house to the stable, coach 
house, and other out-buildings beyond. A 
broad hall runs from each porch inward, 
and the two meet in the centre of the 
house, directly under the apex of the roof. 



The Second Entanglement. ^^ 

Thus one room on the lower floor is sur- 
rounded by the hall, kept apart from the 
rest, and is used as the common sitting- 
room of the family. It is in this room, 
directly over the fireplace which is in the 
outer wall, that the picture of Sir William 
Shapleigh hangs, of which you furnished 
the lower half when you allowed me to 
give to Geoffrey the back board of your Sir 
William. He has had the two halves put 
together. The restorer who did it wished 
to paint out the line of juncture ; but 
Geoffrey would not let him, and so the 
painting is disfigured to all but those who 
know its history, by a very prominent divis- 
ion line horizontally across the middle of it. 
I found my friend had not made a sufl&- 
cient record of its strange history on the 
back of his picture and I begged him to 
let me write the story out briefly, which I 
did. His youngest boy, William, has a lit- 
tle printing press, with which he and some 
of his mates print a little village newspaper 
for their own amusement, and I got the boy 



^4 l^^s Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

to set up my inscription, and in this form 
I pasted it myself on the back of the pic- 
ture. I inclose a copy of it, just as this lit- 
tle Berkshire Fust worked it off his press. 
It looks very much now as if the story 
was not going to stop as this inscription 
leaves it. I must let you remain curious for 
the present, but it shall not be long before 
I tell you more. I wish to follow up cer- 
tain clews, and I hope you will get a more 
continuous story for the waiting. Mean- 
while you can help me a bit. Is there 
among those old quarto plays at Beecham 
the old play which Shakespeare is sup- 
posed to have had in his mind — rather 
vaguely I fancy — when he wrote his 
King John .? I mean what is known as 
The Trotcblesome Raigne of John^ King of 
England, Pray let me know which of the 
editions you have. There was one in 1591 
without name of author ; one in 161 1 with 
'' Written by W. Sh." on the title, and one 
in 1622 — after Shakespeare and Sir Wil- 
liam Shapleigh had died — with '' Writ- 



The Second Entanglement ^5 

ten by W. Shakespeare " on the title. If 
you have got the 1591 edition it is price- 
less, for the one in CapelFs Collections at 
Trinity College, Cambridge, is the only 
one which the bibliographies give. The 
other editions are not so rare. You know 
it has always been in dispute, who wrote 
the play, and the general opinion seems to 
be that Shakespeare had no hand in it, but 
as an antecedent play on the same theme 
with his King John, he made some use of 
it in writing his own play, though only here 
and there such use is discernible. The 
way in which the *^ Written by W. Sh." 
got on the title of the second edition ; and 
became expanded into '* W. Shakespeare," 
in the edition of 1622, — the year before 
we have the play as Shakespeare wrote it 
in the first folio of 1623, — is what in- 
terests me at this moment ; and if your 
library chances to have either of these edi- 
tions, pray scrutinize it closely and let me 
know if you discover anything that may 
throw light on its authorship. I suppose 



jj6 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

the Capell copy has been carefully enough 
scanned, but I shall trouble Aldis Wright 
with an inquiry ; and as they have the 
later editions in the British Museum, pray 
get Roberts to see his friend Rowe. Do 
be patient and kind, my dear Lady Bee- 
cham, and perhaps we shall be rewarded. 

[Inclosure.] 

This painting on panel in two halves 
represents Sir William Shapleigh of Edge- 
mont, Northamptonshire, England. The 
lower half of it was used as a back board 
to a portrait of Sir William, now at Bee- 
cham Hall, England, and being taken from 
the place where it had done duty for two 
hundred and fifty years was joined to the 
other or upper half in 1882, from which, 
for the same period, it had been separa- 
ted. This upper half, cut from the lower 
half probably for convenience in trans- 
portation, had been brought to America 
by Sir William's brother, Geoffrey Shapley, 
in 1636, and had descended in the line 



i 



The Second Entanglement. ^y 

of his descendants, without authentication, 
till it was found to belong to the lower 
half ; and to be evidently a likeness of the 
same person shown in the painting at 
Beecham Hall, which was also proved to 
be like in features and identical in other 
ways with the mask known as the Kessel- 
stadt mask of Shakespeare. 

Press of William Shapley, Oakside. 

II. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, October^ 1885. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — This morn- 
ing, before we came down to breakfast, the 
postman took the letter which I wrote to 
you last evening, and when Kate found I 
had broken off in the middle of my story, 
and left you in ignorance of the best part 
of it, she insisted upon my writing again 
at once, and telling the rest. I tried to 
convince her it would be best to wait till 
further developments, set in train, were 
worked out, but she says, perhaps rightly, 
that you will lose half the enjoyment of it 



^8 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

if you are deprived of the gradual enlight- 
enment which we are undergoing here. 
Besides, she wishes you to work intelli- 
gently in the matter of the quartos, and 
thinks it is hardly fair to keep you in the 
dark as to the bearing they have on the 
story. So you shall have the rest. 

While we were at Oakside we were 
alarmed one day by one of the boys run- 
ning in and crying out that the house was 
on fire. And so, sure enough, it was, and 
the flames were seen breaking through the 
roof, near one of the chimneys. We went 
up into the attic and made quick work in 
knocking a hole through the partition of 
one of the gable chambers, so that we got 
at the spot ; and a few shots with some of 
these new glass exterminators which are 
coming into general use here — and excel- 
lent they are — smothered the flames, and 
the danger was over. But when the fight 
was done, and we surveyed the wrecked 
partition, we found that it had hidden from 
sight a lot of old trumpery, which was 



The Second Entanglement. ^9 

stowed away under the eaves, — an old 
spinning-wheel, a straw basket with a 
woman's green calash and some other old 
feminine toggery in it, a pair of old brass 
andirons, — the same which I have already 
mentioned in my last, and which Geoffrey 
gave to me for my assistance in extin- 
guishing the fire, as he said, — and a little 
black box. There was an old servant in the 
house who remembered when Geoffrey's 
father had had the partition put up, but 
whether these things were left there de- 
signedly or by accident there seemed no 
way of determining. 

The little black box is what now inter- 
ests us. It was locked, and no key was 
found, but Geoffrey, with his mechanical 
knack, soon had it open, and now you 
shall know what it contained. The first 
object we saw was a paper package, which 
seemed heavy, and under it was a folded 
manuscript. The package revealed an old 
brass disk, with a handle something like a 
watch's, but the disk was perforated in a 



40 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

way to make four radial arms connect the 
centre with the rim. This rim was marked 
off into 360 degrees, and a sort of index 
was pivoted on the centre, so as to swing 
round, and follow with its point the scale 
at the circumference. None of us knew 
what it was, but there was an apparent 
reference to it in the manuscript, which 
spoke of an astrolabe. As the Cyclopedias 
at Oakside did not throw all the light 
upon it which we wished, I have been 
looking it up since I came home. I found 
it was an instrument used by the early 
navigators in getting their latitude. It was 
suspended by the handle, the index sighted 
so as to point to the sun at meridian or 
to the north star at night, and then the 
degrees were read off from the scale, and 
the latitude determined. It gave place 
gradually to the jack-staff, as more con- 
veniently used on a rolling ship, and this, 
finally, to the sextant. Curiously enough, 
the date upon it, *^ 1603," is precisely the 
date on one which was used by Champlain 



The Second Entanglement, 41 

when he was in Canada, and which, about 
twenty years ago, was found near a port- 
age up the Ottawa, where he records in 
his journal that he crossed. I have found 
a photograph of this Champlain instru- 
ment, and this one at Geoffrey's is almost 
identical in appearance. 

Now for the manuscript. I brought it 
home with me, and got an old man, whom 
I help sometimes, and who has spent his 
life in deciphering old manuscripts, to 
make me a fair copy of it. This I have 
sent to Oakside, and the boys are to put 
it in type, and when they send me copies 
you shall have one. Meanwhile you shall 
know its purport ; so be prepared for some 
revelations. It is a narrative by the old 
Geoffrey Shapleigh, the same who came over 
in 1636, of a voyage which he made to the 
*' China seas,'' as he expresses it, in 1639- 
40. This was, you see, four years after he 
came over, and ten years after Boston was 
founded by Winthrop. He does not say 
much of the voyage or the route which he 



42 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

took, except that it was " beyond Canaday ; " 
nor is it clear whither he went, though 
there are some indications that it was 
among what we now know as the Charlotte 
Islands, where he met a Spanish ship, which 
had come up to the northwest coast from 
South America. Here he grows a little 
more particular. He speaks of the Span- 
ish commander as '' Admirall Fontay,*' and 
describes some social intercourse between 
the two ships, and says that he received 
from him an '^ astrolabe '' and a chart, and 
gave him in return certain charts of his 
own, which he says were copied from some 
which the ^' great English Admiral Sir 
Fraunces Draque " took home from that 
coast fifty years before, and which he 
(Shapleigh) had brought with him from 
England. It would have been a great piece 
of luck, I find, if this box had preserved 
not only the Spanish maps — which it does 
not — but also copies of Drake's maps, for 
it seems that they are not known except 
as Hondius made use of them ; and Ed- 



The Second Entanglement. 4^ 

ward Hale told me, the other day, when I 
mentioned this to him, that it would have 
been worth all the world to have found a 
copy of Drake's charts, if only to settle 
the question whether he was the first or 
not to enter the Golden Gate at San Fran- 
cisco. Though the little black box does 
not help us on that point, it does reveal 
to us something far more strange. The 
manuscript goes on to say that the Span- 
ish ship had on board, as an interpreter, 
a certain '* Master Kenelton '' of London, 
who, finding some one to talk to in Eng- 
lish, had exchanged pleasant courtesies 
with Captain Shapleigh, and had produced 
a * beetle black case," as Shapleigh ex- 
presses it, in which the interpreter carried 
about with him, as a sort of talisman, — that 
is not the word he uses, which I forget at 
this moment, — the image of the noblest 
face he ever dreamed of, whereupon (he 
continues) this strange gentleman showed 
to him the image of his ''ever honoured 
brother, Sir Will. Shapleigh.'' Kenelton 



44 ^^s Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

then told Captain Shapleigh how he cut 
the bust of Sir William from this face, 
and starting off to find a nephew who had 
been absent for some years in Mexico, he 
had taken the face with him as a charm 
against the dangers of the New World. 
At Acapulco he had, as an interpreter, 
joined the Spanish admiral, who expected 
to find some English farther up the coast. 
The manuscript adds that the strange sur- 
prise of his brother's effigy in that remote 
part of the world, as well as the simple, 
kindly quality of the new friend he had 
found, had opened the way to reciprocal 
courtesies, and that Kenelton had given him 
the plaster face, and that Shapleigh had, 
perhaps incautiously, disclosed the secret 
which his brother's death had made it more 
incumbent on him to preserve, now that 
he alone knew it, namely, tkaf Sir William 
Shapleigh and William Shakespeare were 
one and the same person. He adds that if 
Sir William had survived the actor Shake- 
speare, *'for they each, straungely, died on 



The Second Entanglement 4^ 

the same day, the secret might, in due 
time, have been divulged by Sir William 
himself. 

Now, my dear Lady Beecham, you will 
understand why I am curious to know if 
there is any key to the enigmatical "W. 
Sh.'* on the title of the Troublesome Raigne. 
I have been making inquiries at the rooms 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
here to see if there is anything known of 
such a voyage made from Boston in 1640, 
and if there is any record to show that 
the Geoffrey Shapleigh of 1636 followed the 
seas. I am beginning to get some light 
on the subject, and when everything is in 
order you shall know all about it. Don't 
forget the business of the Troublesome 
Raigne, I beg you, for you may find some- 
thing of first importance to me in working 
out this mystery. 



46 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

III. W TO GEOFFREY SHAPLEY. 

Boston, October, 1885. 

My dear Geoffrey, — You got the old 
manuscript and the fair copy, I hope 
safely ; and when Willie gets it into type 
I trust he will send me two copies, for I 
have promised to send one to Lady Bee- 
cham, whom I have set to work on the in- 
terpretation of the " W. Sh.,*' which I told 
you of. It is curious how matters will in- 
terlink sometimes, is n't it ? I was asking 
Sam. Green at the Historical rooms the 
other day, if he knew anything about a 
voyage from Boston in 1640 to the north- 
west coast, and he replied, " Of course, 
I do ; but it is all gammon, you know ; 
James Savage settled that.'* And then he 
put me on the track. There is no use 
going all through my floundering searches 
to get at all that is known ; but to make a 
brief story of it, I will tell it to you in 
something like a chronological order. 
Now listen. I have n't my notes by me ; I 



The Second Entanglement. ^7 

left them at the Historical rooms, — where 
I have something more yet to do, — so I 
may mistake a date or two, or something 
of that sort, as I write from memory ; but 
the story is substantially this : — 

In 1708 there was published in London 
a collection of separate papers, got up it is 
said by one James Petiver, and called Me- 
moirs for the Curious. I have not been 
able to find the book ; but I have got from 
another source the text of one paper in it, 
which immediately concerns us, and that 
is a dispatch, obtained as I recollect from 
the Spanish Archives, of one Admiral De 
Fonte, which describes in an English trans- 
lation a voyage of a Spanish ship along 
the western coast of North America in 
1 540. It represents that he went up the 
coast to see if he could find some English 
from their American colonies, who, as he 
learned from dispatches sent to him from 
Spain, were seeking a passage by the old 
straits of Anian at the north, so as to 
open trade with the natives for fur. His 



48 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

narrative is so confused, and describes so 
particularly an interminable chain of land- 
locked waters in the region of what we 
know now as Oregon and British Columbia, 
that for some time and until geographers 
got better maps of that region, the story- 
found not a little credence. The fact seems 
to be, as I am informed by Dr. Deane, our 
most learned authority on these matters, 
that when the story came to be doubted, 
the critics laid too great stress on the 
proved inaccuracies of De Fonte's story, 
and did not make a due allowance for all the 
delusions that invariably confuse explorers 
on a nev/ coast, where they see land in 
clouds, and seas in fogs. So it would seem 
that the falsities of De Fonte's geography 
are no sufficient ground in the opinion of 
historical students to reject his narrative 
as wholly fictitious. We might, they say, 
reject half the narratives we have from 
these early navigators, if we judge them 
by our perfected maps. De Fonte's de- 
scriptions were certainly wild enough, but 



The Second Entanglement. 49 

not so wild but some of the wisest geogra- 
phers of the next century employed them 
in their maps. 

The historical evidence as regards the 
Boston ship, which De Fonte says he 
found there with Major-General Gibbons 
on board, a well-known Boston man of that 
time, and under the command of a Cap- 
tain '* Shapley," is what concerns us now. 
Of course this manuscript of yours deter- 
mines the truth of it ; but it is neces- 
sary, I suppose, to overthrow the disbe- 
lief in the whole story as started in the 
Memoirs for the Curious before we can 
expect others to accept it. Let me follow 
a little the story's vicissitudes. It does 
not seem to have attracted much attention 
for nearly forty years till Arthur Dobbs in 
a book on the Hudson Bay country in 
1 744 reprinted the narrative. A few years 
afterwards it was taken up by Delisle, 
Buache, and Vaugondy of Paris, and they 
made maps in accordance with it, — wild 
enough they were ; but the Spanish histo- 



50 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

rian Venegas seems to have thought it 
compromised the geographical credit of 
his countrymen, and in 1757 he laughed at 
the whole story in his book on California. 
Meanwhile Franklin, then in London, had 
heard of it, and remembered enough of 
what he had known of the early Boston 
people to think it worth while to send the 
story over to Thomas Prince in Boston, 
the great local antiquary of his day, and 
both Franklin and Prince seemed to think 
there might be some truth in it, though 
Prince knew no record of any such adven- 
turous voyage at so early a date. I have 
traced the story through the accounts of 
early voyages which the German Forster 
published, in the history which Clavigero 
wrote of Mexico, and in the researches of 
the great Spanish historian Navarrete ; 
but they all discredit it, though at a later 
day Burney and Laharpe in their books 
on the early voyages were inclined to put 
some credence in the story. We come 
now to the examinations of the local anti- 



The Second Entanglement. 5/ 

quaries of Boston. Dr. Snow went over 
it in his history of that city, and was in- 
credulous. Then Caleb Gushing, having 
to write a paper on the northwest passage 
in the North American Review in 1839, 
brought the story forward once more, and 
was rather inclined to believe it. This in- 
stigated our great antiquary of fifty years 
ago, James Savage, to examine it, and he 
may be said in the eyes of men practicing 
his kind of research to have left nothing of 
the story hanging together which is worth 
mentioning. His method was purely the 
antiquary's. He proved Gibbons at home 
when he should have been in the Lazarus 
Archipelago, as De Fonte called it. He 
proved another participant too young for 
such a voyage ; another too old ; another 
settling his mother's estates, as the pro- 
bate record showed, and I don't know what 
else of anachronism and absurdity, — you 
will find it all in the April number, North 
American Review, 1839, if you care to fol- 
low that kind of proof. The fact is, Sav- 



^2 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

age was more deluded than De Fonte was, 
and the records, in his way of going at 
the question, were more deceptive than De 
Fonte's clouds or fogs. I have set some- 
body to work on some of the genealogical 
snarls and other misconceptions of Sav- 
age, now that I have got the key to the 
whole business, and when I get through 
this part of the investigation you shall 
know all about it. 

I have not heard from my friend Von 
Gagern for two or three years. I hope he 
is not dead, for we need to use him once 
more in seeing if we cannot get some- 
thing more out of the young Kesselstadt 
in Mayence. Accordingly I wrote to Von 
Gagern yesterday. . . . 

IV. W TO VON GAGERN. 

B(5sT0N, October, 1885. 

My dear Von Gagern, — You have 
not forgotten, I trust, how you helped me 
in some inquiries about the Kesselstadt 
mask of Shakespeare three or four years 



M-. The Second Entanglement. 5^ 

ago. The plot is now working in another 
direction, and bids fair to be as strange in 
a new entanglement as it was in the old. 

What I wish to find out now is this : 
Is there in those old Kesselstadt papers, 
which that young man with Biichner had 
at Mayence, anything to confirm or add to 
the following statement : — 

Kennelton, the London tomb-maker, went 
subsequently, some time before 1640, to 
Mexico, taking with him the mask of Shap- 
leigh, which, you remember, we found that 
he had. Here he joined the ship of a cer- 
tain Spanish admiral at Acapulco as an 
English interpreter ; went with him to the 
northwest coast of America ; there fell in 
with a Boston ship commanded by a 
brother of Sir William Shapleigh. Here 
I lose sight of him. I count on your help- 
ing me. I am glad once again to renew 
correspondence, and send you, herewith, 
as I promised you the last time I wrote 
to you, a photograph of myself. You will 
hardly recognize the young American 



5^ IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

whom you so kindly treated at Heidel- 
berg ever so many years ago. . . . 



V. LADY BEECHAM TO W- 



Beecham Hall, Novgmber, 1885. 

My dear Mr. W : When your let- 
ter came Roberts and his wife were here 
for a visit, and you can easily imagine his 
ecstasy when he saw the opportunity for 
developing another plot. *' Let 's go to 
the library/' he cried, and so led the way, 
while Emily glanced very passively at me 
as she went along too. Sir George was 
reading the Saturday Review, mumbling 
to himself something about Gladstone's 
doing this or doing that, and my good lord 
evidently thought the condition of the na- 
tion was just now of more importance than 
any more of this nonsense. So we left 
him, and you can imagine how he looked 
with his nose buried in the fold of the 
paper, as in his near-sighted way he read 
and muttered. 

Emily and I stood in the bay, looking 



The Second Entanglement. ^^ 

out sadly, you may believe, on that beau- 
tiful old oak of ours which you may re- 
member we prized so much, and almost 
weeping over its prostrate condition, for 
a terrible gale last evening had leveled it. 
Just then Roberts came dancing down the 
library, holding a little quarto aloft, and 
singing "Tol-a-rol, tol-a-rol, tol-a-rol-roddy, 
— here 'tis just as it should be; I '11 get 
ahead of Rowe this time." 

Now what did this little bit of comedy 
mean.? He had not found the 1591 edi- 
. tion of the Troublesome Reign ; but he 
had found the 161 1 one, and there, sure 
enough, on the title, the "W. Sh." of the 
types was completed by the neat little 
hand, which we all recognize as old Sir 
William's, so as to read, type and manu- 
script, "W. ^\iapleighr Could anything 
be better } But is n't it strange, though,- 
that none of us ever noticed this before. 
The fact is that I don't believe any one 
has looked at those old quartos since you 
were here, and I don't know when anybody 



^6 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

ever looked at them before. You did not 
notice it, it seems, or perhaps if you did 
your wits had not been sharpened by just 
the right experience at that time to make 
it suggestive to you. So it is, however; 
and Roberts says that when he goes to 
town he will take it with him : first, for 
the purpose of showing it to Rowe ; and, 
second, to have a photograph of the title 
taken to send to you.' You will find a way 
to make this discovery prove something, I 
have no doubt. I will trust you for that 
sort of thing. Thank Kate for me, that 
she was so considerate of my womanly im- 
patience. 

VI. VON GAGERN TO W . 



[Translation.] 
Heidelberg, November, 1885. 

My dear good Friend : — Young Kes- 
selstadt has come to Heidelberg to live, 
making up his mind to take a course of 
law in the University ; and on the strength 
of the intercourse which I established with 



The Second Entanglement. 57 

him when we were investigating the other 
matter, he is quite in the habit of coming 
to my house. I took occasion when he 
was here last evening to renew inquiries 
respecting such papers of the Graf von 
Kesselstadt as he may have, and he 
brought to me this morning a package 
which he says contains all he has. Among 
them is the fragment of a journal covering 
the years 1640-42, but there is nothing to 
indicate the writer of it, as the front and 
end leaves are gone. The date 1640 
caught my eye as I turned the leaves 
over, and I needed to read but a little to 
find that it was the very record that could 
help you most. I asked the young man 
why he had not produced it before, and he 
said the dates seemed so far distant from 
that of 16 1 6 and thereabouts, which was 
the period with which in our earlier in- 
quiries of him we were engaged, that it 
did not occur to him that the present pa- 
per could be of interest to us. I soon 
found it was, and would have been of in- 



^8 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

terest in our earlier quest if we could have 
known it. You shall see how this was the 
case. The earliest entry, except a few 
broken lines above it, was made at Aca- 
pulco apparently some time in the summer 
of 1640, and on his return down the coast, 
since it summarizes his voyage to the 
northwest, when, as he says, he had been 
engaged by a Spanish admiral to accom- 
pany him to the North, where he expected 
to meet and to have some negotiations 
with the English. He gives some details 
of the voyage up, describes the country, 
which he represents as wrapped most of 
the time in fog, and he speaks of the trail- 
ing clouds playing strange freaks as they 
moved along the water, simulating head- 
lands, mountains, rocks, and sometimes 
flattening away across stretches of the 
coast valleys, so that the country by these 
deceptive shrouds seemed full of bays and 
islands. I don't know that the records 
which prompt you to write to me give you 
any such details as these, but the descrip- 



The Second Entanglement. 59 

tions strike me as showing that the man 
had a wary eye, and it may possibly be 
a trait of his character which you may 
need to consider. He then speaks of a 
strange experience in meeting in this dis- 
tant region and on board the very ship 
which, as he says, **we had been sent to 
intercept,'* a navigator, as he calls him, 
who, as it turned out, was the brother of 
the man whose bust he had some years 
before made in London from a mask 
which had struck him so much for its no- 
bleness that he had ever since kept it with 
him, the '^ Sire Wilhelm Shapleg ; '' and 
when he showed the face to the '* Kapitan," 
as he calls the English navigator, that per- 
son recognized it at once as his brother. 
He then narrates how he had given the 
image to his new-found friend, and that 
this friend had disclosed to him the secret 
of his i^brother. Sir William, being the real 
author of Shakespeare. This is the sub- 
stance of it. There is considerable detail 
of their intercourse, showing that they ex- 



6o IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

changed courtesies on board their respec- 
tive ships, and how glad the Spanish ad- 
miral was to get the Englishman's sailing 
charts. The coincidences of the meeting 
seemed much to impress him, and he 
speaks of it as a wonderful chance. He 
apparently left the ship at Acapulco, and 
after some delay in Mexico found his way 
at last to Hispaniola, where he got on 
board a Boston ship which was down 
there trading, he intimates, with the buc- 
caneers of the neighborhood. This was 
apparently the next year, or perhaps two 
years after he left Acapulco, for the chro- 
nology of the diary is not very clear in 
some placesr He says that this Boston 
ship had on board one whom he recog- 
nized, being the same Gibbons whom he 
had seen when he was in the Archipelago 
of St. Lazarus, wherever that may be. He 
went in this vessel to Boston, where he 
speaks of seeing ^'Alisand Shapleg," and 
he calls him another brother of that '' Kapi- 
tan " whom he had also seen in the Archi- 



The Second Entanglement. 6i 

pelago. This " Alisand " told him that the 
" Kapitan '' was at Piskat Aqua, and urged 
him to go there to see him ; but he adds 
that there was a ship just sailing for Bris- 
tol, the ''Lyon, Kapitan Noles," and he 
thought it best to proceed at once. He 
asked '^ Alisand '' if the '^ Kapitan " had 
shown him the talismanic face, but he 
could not learn that he had. We have 
now some ordinary details of the voyage 
of no special interest, and he reaches Bris- 
tol without mishap. Thence he went to 
London to find that Maximilian Powtran, 
his old master, was dead, and another was 
conducting his business as a statuary. In 
gathering together some of his own effects, 
which he had left there before going to 
Mexico, he found the original mould which 
he had taken from the face of Sir William 
Shapleigh. He made a new cast from it, 
and says that before the plaster dried he 
marked it in remembrance of the secret 
which he had got from the Kapitan, Nach 
traditionen Shakespeare. The last remain- 



62 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

ing entry was written on the day before he 
left London for his own country. He 
speaks of the return of his nephew from 
Mexico with his son, — a grand nephew of 
the diarist, — and of their intention to re- 
main in England. Mentioning how he had 
been packing up his effects, he refers to 
the mask, which he had taken special pains 
to prepare for the transit. Here the rec- 
ord ends. I cannot find anything else 
among the papers which seems to have 
any connection with the mask or this ad- 
venturing scion of the family. 

I remember writing to you before that 
this young Kesselstadt had a notion that 
his father had in a freakish way marked 
the so-called Kesselstadt mask with the 
name of Shakespeare. This present rec- 
ord would seem to indicate otherwise, and 
to establish about as well as circumstan- 
tial evidence can establish anything, that 
the Kesselstadt mask which we now have 
was a replica^ of which the earlier copy 
taken from the mould must be somewhere 



The Second Entanglement. 6^ 

with the heirs of this " Kapitan Shapley '' 
in America. 

I trust, dear friend, you will not fail to 
let me know what you find to result from 
all this. It is certainly very extraordinary 
that I should have hit upon what so ex- 
actly fits the details of which you have 
given me an outline. 

VII. W TO GEOFFREY SHAPLEY. 

Boston, December, 1885. 

My dear Geoffrey, — I have got a 
most satisfactory letter from my friend 
Von Gagern in Heidelberg ; and Kate has 
made the copy which I inclose. Just ob- 
serve how the description of the country 
where the Boston ship met the Spanish 
admiral corresponds with the dispatch of 
De Fonte ; there is this difference how- 
ever, that while the sailor sees in all these 
apparitions headlands and bays, the closer 
attention of the artist recognizes the de*- 
ceptions of nature. What he says of 
" Gibbons '^ is very conclusive. This Gib- 



64 IVas Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

bons was a somewhat eccentric man, not 
without a certain force of character, and he 
was much sought for pubUc station by his 
neighbors ; but there are records never- 
theless of some questionable proceedings 
on his part, not free from some of the 
vices, which were linked with sea-service 
and trade in those days. We know that 
he had before this been engaged in what 
seemed very like friendly intercourse with 
the buccaneers. If you chance to have 
Palfrey's New England, at hand, look in 
vol. ii. p. 226 for what I mean. If you have 
not the book, it must be at hand, I thinjc 
in the Pittsfield Athenaeum. The chance 
which brought Kesselstadt or Kenelton 
to Boston is very curious. I have been 
looking up the Shapleigh genealogy, and 
I find that Alexander Shapleigh — the 
"Alisand Shapleg," of course — was a 
prominent man in Piscataqua, — observe 
how in his phonetic way he makes two 
words of it, evidently thinking the Latin 
has something to do with it, — or what we 



The Second Entanglement. 65 

now know as Kittery ; and I have before 
told you that the identity of the arms on 
your old parchment pedigree — a green 
shield with a silver chevron between three 
silver escallops — with the record of those 
borne by these New Hampshire or Maine 
Shapleighs, led me some time ago to think 
that your old Geoffrey and this Alexander 
were of the same family. You need not be 
ashamed of this branch of the family ; for 
if your ancestor was the earliest to pass 
the northwest passage, the son of Alexan- 
der, Nicholas Shapley, has given us the 
earliest chart of the Carolina coast which 
shows any definite knowledge ; for with his 
brother-in-law William Hilton — the same 
whose name became so prominent during 
our civil war in Hilton Head — he was 
down that coast and mapped it preparatory 
to the English settling there a score of 
years later. 

As to Kenelton or Kennelton, there is, 
you observe, a similar variation in spelling 
as in Shapleigh and Shapley. 



66 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

VIII. W TO GEOFFREY SHAPLEY. 

Boston, December, 1885. 

Dear Geoffrey, — We have about got 
through now, I think. Captain Roberts 
has sent me a memorandum from Rowe of 
the British Museum, by which it appears 
that the Memoirs for the Curious were 
written by two persons, James Petiver and 
Josiah Noltenek. I have seen it stated 
before that Petiver was the fabricator of 
the De Fonte account, — it is so stated, 
for instance, in Hubert Bancroft's North- 
west Coast, — and I tried to make an ana- 
gram of it, thinking it must conceal some- 
body who is perhaps known, but I could 
not resolve the name in any such way. 
Rowe says that in a copy which is in the 
Museum these names are written against 
their respective contributions ; and that 
Noltenek is against the De Fonte story. 
It is not so difficult to make an anagram 
of Noltenek = Kenelton. This is some- 
how another link in the evidence, but I 



The Second Entanglement. 6y 

hardly know how to connect it, except we 
suppose this Kenelton of 1708 to be the 
grand nephew of our Kenelton the tomb- 
maker and wanderer, and you remember 
Von Gagern found mention of such a 
grand nephew in the diary of Kessel- 
stadt. 

I told you I was going to get Ward of 
the Genealogical Society to examine Sav- 
age's proofs in -the light of this new evi- 
dence, and he has done it, as you will see 
by the inclosure. You may congratulate 
yourself now, fairly enough, on having the 
author of Shakespeare hanging over your 
mantel-piece, — Shapleigh, who was and 
WAS NOT Shakespeare ! 

[Inclosure.] 

Savage's chief points against the De 
Fonte story, as respects its connection 
with early Boston and New England char- 
acters, are these : first, that it did not ap- 
pear by Savage's list of freemen of the 
Massachusetts Colony which he appended 



68 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

to his edition of Winthrop's Journal that 
there had been any one of the name 
of Shapley to take the oath previous to 
1640. To make this objection valid re- 
quires another, namely : that Shapley could 
not have been in Boston without being a 
freeman; and could not be employed by 
Gibbons to command the ship, because 
he was not a freeman and not a church- 
member, this last being a requisite for a 
freeman in those days. To sustain these 
objections it is necessary for Savage to 
assume, in the first place, that his list was 
correct, and the records unimpeachable, — 
propositions hardly tenable against positive 
evidence of the existence of such a man ; 
and to assume also, in the second place, 
that a man of such known proclivities for 
questionable actions as Gibbons was, would 
have had any scruple in intrusting the 
command of the ship to a good navigator 
because he did not chance to be a free- 
man and a church-member. Such an as- 
sumption hardly amounts to proof. Sav- 



The Second Entanglement. 69 

age further says that the earliest of the 
name found here is Nicholas Shapleigh, 
who is mentioned in some land records as 
having transactions through an agent as 
early as 164.1, and who was himself in the 
country some years later. We now know 
he was the son of Alexander Shapleigh, 
who was an agent of Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges (see N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg. 
y. 345), and we know also that the recent 
discovery of the Trelawney Papers has 
proved that this Alexander Shapleigh had 
come over accompanied by a brother — 
now shown by the Kenelton or Kessel- 
stadt narrative to have been Geoffrey Shap- 
ley or Shapleigh — as early as 1636, and 
in the interest of Gorges. So this count 
of Savage against the story seems to fail. 

His other accusation is this : that Ed- 
ward Gibbons was at this time major or 
captain, — he is sometimes called one and 
sometimes the other, — and not major- 
general, as De Fonte calls him, and that 
he is, according to the Colony records, 



yo Was Shakespeare Shapleigh ? 

found doing official acts in Massachusetts 
between March, 1639, and October, 1641, 
with no interval in which he could possi- 
bly have found his way on any ship to the 
northwest coast so as to be there in July, 
1640. The objection respecting the title 
amounts to nothing when we remember 
that it was Gibbons' purpose to make a 
good impression on the Spaniards, and De 
Fonte would call him what he called him- 
self ; but on the other point the proof 
amounts to an alzdiy taken as he puts it. 
Again the Boston town records show Capt. 
Edward Gibbons to have been occupied 
with town affairs between May, 1639, ^^d 
July, 1640, which is further proof of the 
same sort of an alzdi. 

To examine this last statement first. 
It does not appear by the Second Report 
of the Boston Record Commissioners, pub- 
lished in 1877, ^^d which contain the town 
records between 1634 and 1660, that Gib- 
bons is mentioned at all between October, 
1637 (P- 21), and ''the i8th of ist mo., 



The Second Entanglement yi 

1644/' so that proof of an alibi is demol-, 
ished. There are no separate records of 
the Boston Selectmen before 1701, so Sav- 
age could not have used that source. It 
would then seem that the notes of the 
famous antiquary were confused, and he 
mistook his memoranda ; or else that the 
editor of the North American, who in writ- 
ing the paper acknowledged his indebted- 
ness to Savage's notes, must have misused 
them in some way. 

Now as regards the evidence of the 
Court Records. In examining Shurtleff's 
edition of them, it seemed that Savage 
was right, but I noticed in one of the en- 
tries in March, 1642, that the transition 
from one time to another seemed rather 
abrupt. As the matter involved in this 
transition was something that interested 
me otherwise, and had no connection with 
Gibbons, I asked Mr. Coolidge to let me 
see the original, with no expectation that 
I should discover anything bearing on the 
Gibbons problem. This earliest volume 



y2 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

of the Massachusetts Court Records is 
very fragile and for security is kept in a 
box, and is never resorted to except in 
case of dispute. I soon discovered what 
has never been observed before, that the 
records seem to have been written on 
loose quires, and that there are at least 
two different water-marks in the paper, 
and one set of quires is a trifle shorter and 
was probably a little broader than the 
other. At least I cannot otherwise ac- 
count for the fact that in some of the 
quires the binder has pared into the rec- 
ord and in others he has not, and I found 
that in every case where this damage had 
been done, the water-mark was the same. 
Not to make too long a story of it, one 
quire embraces the entries from March, 
1639, to March, 1642, and another those 
from March, 1642, to March, 1645, ^^^ in 
binding these two quires had simply been 
transposed, the paring having removed 
the last figure of the years. The conse- 
quence was that what Gibbons did in 



The Second Entanglement yji 

1642-45 was made to appear as happening 
in 1639-42. When I pointed out the evi- 
dences of this to Mr. Coolidge, the chief 
clerk of the secretary's office, he said it 
explained other difficulties, which had oc- 
curred before, and also accounted for some 
discrepancy between the records and Win- 
throp's Journal, as Savage had himself 
pointed out without satisfactory explana- 
tion in his edition of Winthrop. 

So I think we may consider the evi- 
dence which Savage adduced for an alibi 
for Gibbons has entirely vanished. 

J. Trask Ward. 

Boston, December 15, 1885. 

[Memorandum by W on the same sheet.] 

Two Other propositions by Savage which 
Mr. Ward has not touched upon need not 
trouble us. One is that there is no evi- 
dence that any Boston ship was ever in the 
northwest coast till a century and a half 
later, referring to Captain Gray and the 
"Columbia/* I suppose. You remember 



y4 ^^5 Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

that Gray and his men were called " Bas- 
tonnais/' — a term which was always sup- 
posed to be a designation of the English, 
which had found its way across the con- 
tinent from the French in Canada, who 
looked upon all New Englanders as Bos- 
toneers, to give an equivalent term. May 
it not be rather a reminiscence of this voy- 
age of Shapleigh ? At all events, when we 
consider the money-making and somewhat 
dubious side of Gibbons* character, it may 
not be altogether strange to find that he 
failed to make any record of the voyage 
for others to follow in his tracks, and se- 
cure any share of the peltries which he 
wished to monopolize. You will remem- 
ber also that ^* Alisand " had not heard 
from his brother anything about the inter- 
view with Kenelton which so nearly con- 
cerned their family, the disclosure of which 
might have betrayed whither the voyager 
had gone. 

The other point which Savage raises, 
that somebody had said that the Spanish 



The Second Entanglement. y^ 

archivists have found no record of such an 
admiral as De Fonte and such a voyage, 
could be investigated if it was necessary, 
but it hardly seems worth while. I have 
looked a little into the early Spanish voy- 
ages, and found that a veritable Admiral 
De Font^a: was exploring Tierra del Fuego 
in 1649, — '^^^y likely the same person. 

W. 

IX. W TO LADY BEECHAM. 

Boston, January 1886. 

My dear Lady Beecham, — You wrote 
to me when we were pursuing the authen- 
ticity of your portrait of Sir William Shap- 
leigh something like this : ^' Don't deprive 
me of an ancestor unless you can make 
Shakespeare a friend of our house.'* I 
have had the essential letters in the cor- 
respondence which I have been lately con- 
ducting written out fairly by a type-writer, 
and send you the batch. You can therein 
see for yourself that you are not deprived 
of an ancestor, and that Shakespeare was 



y6 Was Shakespeare Shapleigh? 

not only the friend, but the founder of 
your house, — in fact, as I read it, Shakes- 
peare WAS AND WAS NOT ShAPLEIGH ! 

Note by the Editor. — These letters give no clew 
to the present depository of the mask which may once 
have been preserved in the black box ; nor has inquiry 
among the parties in interest led to any knowledge, either 
of its existence or of its destruction. It seems likely 
enough that Captain Shapleigh himself destroyed it, as 
his possession of it might have required explanations 
which his employer, Gibbons, would not wish to have 
made. 

The editor did not think it worth while to indicate that 
W , in his first letter, erred in not saying that the in- 
itialed dedication of Shakespeare was in his Sonnets, 
instead of the first folio of the Plays ; but he observes 
that so wary a Shakespearian as Mr. Rolfe is critical 
even upon so familiar a correspondence as the present 
one. 



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